December 15, 2014

The Russian Ruble Is Now Entering Free Fall

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Speaking of a possible economic crisis in Russia, it looks like the ruble is now entering free fall:

For months, Russia’s ruble has been falling in line with a decline in oil. But now, the selloff has stepped up a gear amid a broad rout in emerging-market currencies. Monday, the dollar shot above 63 against the battered Russian currency….“There’s no relief in sight, the mood on the market is pessimistic. Any recovery in the ruble is used to buy into foreign currencies,” said Igor Akinshin, a trader at Alfa Bank.

….The country’s bond markets are also under strain. Russia’s dollar bond maturing in Sept. 2023 is yielding 7.102%, up from 6.633% on Friday.

It’s above my pay grade to speculate on how this ends. But it’s worth keeping an eye on.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

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